Why Accelerator-Driven Transmutation of Wastes Enables Future Nuclear Power?

Criticality concerns, decay heat management and radioactive waste handling are perceived as the primary, unsatisfactorily resolved technological problems of nuclear reactors. They all originate from very specific features of a fission phenomenon: self-sustained chain reaction in fissile materials, very strong radioactivity of fission products and very long half-life of some of the radioactive fission and activation products Accelerator-driven transmutation systems , which operate in a subcritical mode and stay subcritical, regardless of the beam being on or off, can in principle address the safety issues associated with criticality, particularly for advanced fuel containing a high fraction of minor actinides. Subcriticality can also improve the controllability of this nuclear system through a simple electronic control of the accelerator. Subcriticality provides also substantial flexibility in fuel processing and managing. Accelerator-driven transmutation systems can accept such fuels that would be impossible or difficult to use in critical reactors, and can extend their cycle length ensuring good transmutation performance. Moreover, an advanced subcritical core design can also address some concerns of decay heat management. However, a significant development of accelerator technology has to be achieved before a construction of the first industrial ATW facility can be realized. The high-intensity accelerator with a beam power in the range of 10-100 MW has to be available with the stability, efficiency, reliability, operability and maintainability features never demanded before from the accelerator technology.